The Art(s) of Nonviolence

Abstract

Revolutions are usually thought to be impossible until they occur; then they are thought to have been inevitable.In recent years we have seen a number of revolutionary or significant changes of regime, in places such as the former USSR and East Germany, in the Philippines and South Africa,and at the core of many of these changes has been nonviolent political action (NVPA). There has been little recognition by the mass media, however, of the key role that nonviolence has played, despite its role in overthrowing even totalitarian regimes and police states. Rather, the revolutions have been attributed to charismatic leaders like Gorbachev, Yeltsin or Mandela, or to some ill-defined people power. Yet, even a cursory study of these changes of regime indicate that rather than simple, short coups by a charismatic few, most were the result of sustained, systematic mass campaigns of nonviolent action, occasionally in momentous surges, but more often in a thousand, small, daily rebellions by ordinary people at a grassroots level, that like a pressure cooker, does build towards an inevitable boil-over.